


SPEAK ME

by internetname



Series: SPEAK ME [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:37:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7611166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/internetname/pseuds/internetname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When the fire was done, there was a sort of middle space with no breath. He thought, <i>If this is eternity, I can handle it. </i>But before he even finished registering the absence of pain, he was in a room with dim lighting, nothing on the walls, floor, or ceiling except him and a small end table that had seen better days. Something that would look perfectly fine with a little sanding and some paint." Set a few days after the series' end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SPEAK ME

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series of stories, have no idea how many. (BTW, Angel’s story line with Spike does not exist in my world. And don't even talk to me about those comics.)

When the fire was done, there was a sort of middle space with no breath. He thought, _If this is eternity, I can handle it._ But before he even finished registering the absence of pain, he was in a room with dim lighting, nothing on the walls, floor, or ceiling except him and a small end table that had seen better days. Something that would look perfectly fine with a little sanding and some paint.  
  
On the table was an index card, and as he walked—oh, his legs were back, though the tacky jewelry was gone—his duster hung from his shoulders, a tribute to his victory over both the slayer he had killed and the creature that had killed her. He marveled at his (re-skinned?) hands as they picked up the card, losing seconds before he actually read the block-printed letters:  
  
_SPEAK ME_  
  
“Yeah,” heard himself mumble. “That’s helpful.”  
  
The back of the card was blank, and now even the table was gone. And there he was standing like a ponce in a place he thought must belong to a dimension of big, fat sod all, looking around for a sign of what the buggerin’ hell the card meant. He’d sacrificed himself body and brain and demon and soul to save the world, her world, and now what? Was this some sort of holding cell while they warmed the oven up, or was just nothing with nothing on top the best reward a killer like him could get?  
  
_Not even a bottle of jack squat to give me ideas_ , he thought idly, suddenly desperate for a drink or a fight or something he could throw himself into next.  
  
And there in front of him, like Macbeth’s little dagger of the mind, was an outline of a squared-off bottle, a suggestion from his thoughts. And he almost reached for it when he realized he was still holding the index card.  
  
_SPEAK ME_  
  
_Not “wish me,”_ he thought. Not a trick, he hoped. If he wanted a bottle for saving the world, evidently he could get one.  
  
“Bugger that!” he shouted, stepping back then flinching in horror as images of himself and that bottle flooded his (resurrected?) brain.  
  
But no, it wasn’t one of those “get what you said, not what you meant” type of deals, thank God, because the bottle’s wavering shape just popped out.  
  
He looked down at the card again, understanding now.  
  
_SPEAK ME_  
  
And then the card just went away, and he was standing there, himself (vampire, resouled, champion, love’s bitch) in a nothing room that was not a cell, but an empty place for him to fill up, as long as he said what he wanted aloud.  
  
Well, as rewards went, that was a bit more like it for a man who’d saved the world, even if it were more than he deserved. And he’d do it too. Not like he didn’t know exactly—exactly what he wanted, or rather who. And who gave a piss whether he deserved her or not? And he’d gotten the first sound, a sort of “Buh,” out of his mouth before he remembered like crashing into a wall that the universe just didn’t work like that.  
  
_Think, you idiot! The bottle didn’t come with accessories. You get a thing, not a place._  
  
What was he supposed to do? Wish the Slayer down here, forever, with him? Rip her away from her real friends? Chain her down in this room with nothing but little things he could whip up to amuse her?  
  
_And a bed_ , some part of him whispered, which he hissed at to shut up.  
  
But the images came anyway, and he knew it was his demon’s doing because they were all memories now of when she’d been so tormented she used him as her fire and brimstone, her sackcloth and ashes, demanding he invade pretty much any part of her body with pretty much any part of his, hurting her as much as he was giving her pleasure while the demon said it was what she wanted, what she needed, and it didn’t care what it did to her.  
  
And then even the demon objected to his self-loathing. It had cared. It was a demon, but by whatever god you liked it had cared.  
  
Different images now: a bathroom almost as white and plain as where he was now, when he’d hurt her in a way nothing with a soul would ever—should ever hurt anyone. And he’d gotten the spark, and eventually she had come to care for him, even pretending for his sake, there at the end, that she could love something like him. She’d even taken his hand and shared the fire that would consume him, as though she wanted to share his burden, as though it were truly difficult to leave him behind.  
  
And what? Now he’d repay that with wishing her down here with him? No soddin’ way.  
  
But he wasn’t cashing in all his tokens for a bleedin’ bottle of Jack, either.  
  
Calming himself, pacing around a bit to settle down into his (restored?) body, he told himself to take a little time, not just follow his blood for once in his sorry excuse for an existence.  
  
_OK, so Buffy has to be here, or there’s just no point to any of this. But it can’t actually be Buffy because that’s not fair to her. So what does that leave me?_  
  
He thought, of course, about some sort of mystical version of the Buffybot. And this time it wouldn’t be limited by stupid scenarios and that twat’s ideas about what he wanted. He could say he wanted a real Buffy copy, even with the parts of her he didn’t know about yet, whatever those could be. He could speak it into a perfect package: goddess and bitch, plague to his existence and balm to his fever, lover and—  
  
His stomach rolled. His gut wanted to heave. Because if he did that, what would he have to be to believe in it? He’d always know it was a copy, an empty propped-up thing, unless he made himself blind to it. And if he made himself forget what it really was, he would become the thing he hated most: a thing manipulating him and an ignorant ass of a willing slave to a reflection of what he loved.  
  
So, no. He’d skip that. Ta very much.  
  
_OK, so no real Buffy and no simulated Buffy._  
  
Memories, he thought next. He could pick a really good one with her, something that could last an eternity or two. He had a couple nominations right away.  
  
That first time, in the building that fell down and went boom while they’d shagged their brains out and he’d been blind enough to think it actually was going to lead to something good. When she’d clamped her warrior’s legs around him, ripped open his fly, and pushed him inside her. When her eyes had met his (or had at least seemed to), and he could only stare at her in wonder even as he sought to make it the best she’d ever had.  
  
Though that wasn’t hard, considering the Poof, the Dumbass, and the Tin Soldier who’d been there before him. What could they do to her that could match him at that moment, all lit up and bruised with passion? He’d met her on the bloody battlefield, striven to keep up, to be worthy of her strength by holding nothing back. And each thrust into her heat had been him pushing out everyone else, even as his skin erased every touch that wasn’t his, until he wasn’t just taking her, but she was taking him, and he’d thought, soulless and ignorant, that he could actually be what she needed as much as what, in that moment, she’d wanted.  
  
But then there he’d be again, stuck in a memory where he didn’t know what he knew now, that he’d been nothing but a sadistic sex toy she’d kept using and then tossing with disgust into the back of a drawer when he’d served his purpose.  
  
So OK, then, no, but what about the time he’d actually been something to her, when she’d been with him, or at least had said she was? It really had been the best night of his whole life and unlife, just holding her while she slept, kissing her hair, feeling her warmth, looking, when she woke for a bit, into her eyes.  
  
And he knew, actually knew that he’d helped her. She said he’d given her strength for the next day, her first real triumph against Caleb and the First. That bloody scythe had been the key to the whole thing, hadn’t it? And he’d helped her get it.  
  
But even while his soul urged words to his lips, his demon and even just what made him a man pushed the thoughts away. What had been hours of wonder wouldn’t last for eternity, and damn it but he was getting some form of her for eternity if he could. Eventually, he knew, he’d reach for more than he should, and the thought that she would turn away, withdraw, even maybe hate him for ruining that bit of platonic paradise with wanting to put his lips on hers, let alone take her breasts in his hands, feel her nipples harden, reach down into her wet—  
  
Nope. Nope. Not going there. Just no. Not that night. Any other, perhaps, but that night and the two that followed had been perfect. Just holding her, just being there with her. He’d made the right choices, and so had she. He’d been on a path that led to sacrificing his body. Would he have been half as eager to give it all up if his skin or breath or tongue still held traces of her pleasure? Apart from the hand he’d held—and even then surely the fire had seared away whatever moisture from her skin had been transferred—he’d taken nothing from her body when he’d burned. It had just been him, and that had been just fine.  
  
So, no real Buffy, no fake Buffy, no memory of Buffy.  
  
“So, what?” he asked the blank room. Could he speak himself instead of her? No, but perhaps a sort of mystical telly, or a crystal ball, like the Wicked Witch used to spy on the little girl. He could just watch her be happy now, be the Slayer with her slayerettes, be in the world.  
  
Yeah, in the world without him. No thanks. A few days of that and he’d throw the crystal to the ground, put his foot through the screen. And then what? Wish himself a nice book version instead?  
  
_Think_ , he told himself. What would he have used this reward for before he’d earned it? What would he have wanted back when it was all just hopes and dreams and standing beneath her window and wanting her so much he’d swear he could light his cigarettes just holding them up to the heat in his chest?  
  
Spike stopped pacing, frowned a bit at a blank bit of wall.  
  
Now, there was an idea. Real Buffy, but not when she was being real. Dream Buffy, real dream Buffy. He could speak a dream of him, her dream. That would be a thing, wouldn’t it?  
  
But wait, it would be rape. _Again, you bastard._  
  
_Not if she said it wasn’t._  
  
_And how would she do that, exactly?_  
  
_Well, it would be her dream, right? Not just yours, not even yours. You’d just be playing a part, like you did in her real life. And she would be in control._  
  
_Yeah, and then she’d kick my ass out on the street, and I’m not standing under that tree again for eternity._  
  
_You could persuade her._  
  
_To do what? Have my way with her in her own dream?_  
  
_Talk with her. Fight with her. For God’s sake, you’re not just some cock on a stick._  
  
_I might just as well have been._  
  
_But that was then. This would be a dream, and she might go for it in a dream. She might choose us in a dream. There was still enough passion in her, even at the end, for a dream._  
  
_And when she wakes up? Would I even be something anymore?_  
  
_Make the dream forever._  
  
_And trap her with me again?_  
  
_No. Dreams have their own reality, right? And they don’t make any sense. Make it forever for you and just a regular dream for her. She wakes up, thinks, “Wow, that was hot,” and then goes on with the rest of her life. No rape, no trap. If she says yes, and you don’t totally let her down, it would even be a good memory for her. Like a goodbye shag you never got to have because the world just loves to kick your undead ass._  
  
And oh God, he was tempted. All of him. He couldn’t even figure out which voices were the demon's or the soul's, now. But there was still so much to lose, if she said no.  
  
_If she can’t say no, it’s—_  
  
_I know what the damn thing is! And if she says no, then I get nothing forever without even a chance to keep trying._  
  
And he waited for himself to answer that. Demon, soul, man, brain, cock, his left foot for all he cared: something in him needed to work this out.  
  
_It could be a shared dream._  
  
_What’s that mean when it’s at home, you wanker?_  
  
_Your dream, the one that lasts forever, could be yours, and her dream, which ends when she wants it to, that could be hers. So she could say no, but you could keep hoping. And hope’s pretty good, right?_  
  
_An eternity of hoping, like some damned fool until the end of time?_  
  
_Everyone who hopes is a fool. You’d have a chance until the end of time. Being inside her this time and have it mean something? Probably not. But a chance to make her smile, right? You could always get a grin, even when she was still half-dead inside. A chance to talk a bit, see how her day’s going? If the dream lasted forever, you could ask her about her life, get her to share a bit about the grand adventure she’s having as leader of the new slayers. Think of the new Big Bads she’s going to face. You could give her some advice, be helpful to her, to the Real Buffy, maybe even to the Niblet and her boy and the witch and the daddy-wannabe. And maybe to that Kennedy. She was a bit of something, wasn’t she? And to that saucy dark slayer, Faith. But not to Nikki’s boy. Sod him._  
  
Damn, but this was starting to sound pretty good. He could dream of her golden hair in the sunlight, and she could dream of whatever crossed her ever-changing mind. They could patrol together, wherever she ended up, and he could watch her back and lend a hand in the dream and, at least a little bit—certainly more than he deserved if less than what she did—in her waking life.  
  
Maybe she’d even dream sometimes of her lovely mother, and Joyce could make them all a cuppa, and Buffy would be happy in the way that dreams can make you happy, and he’d get to watch it, wouldn’t he? And Joyce could tell another story about her gallery, and he could show off a bit, yeah? He knew more about art than he’d ever let on to her and the Scoobies. He hadn’t just eaten starving artists back then, had he? A few of them were too entertaining over glasses of Absinthe to drain dry. And Dru would pout and storm about in her room while he went to cafés and got pissed with the Green Fairy and heard all about brushstrokes that made their own light.  
  
He could surprise her, even now, and then forever. And she’d smile. And maybe she would offer her forgiveness, and everybody would forgive.  
  
Maybe, in their dream, he could be loved, a little bit.  
  
“All right,” he announced to whoever/whatever was listening. “I’ve got it, all right? And if this is about intent and not the way I phrase it, then I just want what I’ve been thinking about, you hear me? I want to dream with her, with the Slayer, with Buffy, the real soddin’ Buffy. And I want my dream forever and hers only for as long as she likes. You got that?”  
  
He looked around at bare walls. Waited a moment, then a few more.  
  
“And I want my dream to start now, damn you.”  
  
The card was back in his hand, and he whipped it up to read the same bleedin’ two words he already knew.  
  
“But I am speaking it!”  
  
The card actually seemed to be looking back at him, until he crushed it in his hand.  
  
Oh, but wait. Maybe…  
  
“OK, I got to say it, that what you’re saying? Make it real, well, dream-real first?” He smoothed out the card, nodded at it.  
  
“All right. The dream starts, and we’re, we’re wherever she really is now, whatever room she’s in, sleeping.”  
  
And the nothing room became another room, though not one all that much more interesting. Pure Americana roadside inn, at its worst, with a noisy air conditioner. And it was dark, but he could see bodies in the beds, a couple more on the floor with pillows and blankets, and the whole place smelled like women and laundry.  
  
_Smells? That’s good._  
  
He reached out carefully and touched a bedspread.  
  
_Feels cheap. Think I’m tasting too, and I can certainly hear the snoring._  
  
Well, this was nice, wasn’t it? A dream that felt as real as dreams could get, which was pretty much just, well, real. Not too bad at all.  
  
Except.  
  
“I want it just the Slayer and me in here, if you don’t mind,” he said quietly. “For now, at least.”  
  
And the sleeping girls went away until there was just a line of Buffy under the bedclothes in the twin bed right next to him, and he saw her hair on the pillow in the moonlight coming through the open window, and it just about dropped him to his knees.  
  
_My dream_ , he thought. _None of that nancy-boy faffing about in my dream._  
  
“And she wakes up,” he said aloud. “And she sees me.”  
  
He watched her breath come and go, and then sort of stutter a bit, and then she rolled over, opened her eyes, and looked right at him.  
  
“Spike!”  
  
He winced at the volume, but he knew now he’d spoken it right about it being her dream too because she was sitting up and wearing the most grandma-ugly nightshirt he’d ever seen in his life. Could barely make out of a bit of her neck in that thing.  
  
“Slayer,” he said back to her, and then remembered to add with a little grin: “Hello, cutie.”  
  
She just stared at him, not even blinking. And he just drank her in: the sleep-tousled hair, the sleep-creased face, that sin against eyesight she was wearing.  
  
“Did you pick that out for yourself?” he asked, gesturing.  
  
She looked down like a reflex, then back up at him, then, with a frown, around at the room.  
  
“Where are the others?” she asked.  
  
“Just us, pet.” He smiled, and then realized that might scare her. “Don’t worry. Not about anything. Nothing frightening here, I promise.”  
  
She ran a hand over her hair, and he saw with regret that it was trembling a little. “Then what happened to Dawn and the girls?”  
  
Spike leaned down a bit, made himself smaller. “Nothing happened, luv. They’re fine. We’re just dreaming. I mean, you’re dreaming, and I’m here. Hope you don’t, you know, mind too much. I can leave if you do.”  
  
“Leave?” She sounded like she didn’t care for that idea, which was bloody splendid, all things considered. He knew he was beaming at her.  
  
“This is a dream?” she asked, looking him over now, bleached hair to well-worn boots, and following her gaze he noticed with pleasure his nails looked freshly done.  
  
“Well, yeah. You’re dreaming that you’re in whatever the soddin’ hell this piece of paradise is, and I’m dreaming I’m here with you.”  
  
She frowned, and the way it crunched her nose just a little struck little warm sparks in his dreamed-up heart.  
  
“You’re dreaming? You mean, I’m not just dreaming of you?”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“So, where are you?” she asked.  
  
“What? I’m here, like I said.”  
  
She shook her head, and shiny locks of gold swayed around her scrubbed face. He wondered if he’d ever seen her without earrings on before. God, she looked tired, poor lamb.  
  
“No, if you’re here, you’re sleeping somewhere else. Where are you?”  
  
Spike shook his head back, but gentle-like. “No, no. I’m just here, in this dream. This is where I exist now.” He beamed at her again.  
  
“You’re in my dream forever?”  
  
He shook his head harder now. “No, and I mean it. Nothing like that for you to worry about. I know I spoke it right.” He put up a finger. “I’m here forever. That’s my dream.” Another finger went up. “But this is your dream, and it ends whenever you like. I’m not haunting you or anything like that, Slayer, I promise you.”  
  
She was frowning harder now. “I don’t understand.”  
  
He shrugged, willing her to see the joy, thrilled that she didn’t yet, because that meant this was real, or rather, a real dream coming straight from her. She really was, well, not there, but close enough. Better than enough.  
  
“Don’t make it try to make sense, luv. It won’t. See, I figured it out right, for once. Dreams don’t have to make sense. I mean, there you are one minute, talking to Monet about who’s going to buy the next round, and then you’re naked and howling at the moon even though you’re not a werewolf, and then you’re punching Angelus in his broodin’ puss, and then you’re walking in Hyde Park dressed like a ninny and not giving a damn, right?”  
  
She looked at him and blinked a few times.  
  
“It’s a dream,” he said, wishing a bit now he could just make her catch a clue. “They do whatever they want. And I wanted to dream about you forever without trapping you, ever, and you’re just having a dream about ole Spike!” He shrugged again. “Won’t even remember it when you wake up, if you don’t want to,” he added softly.  
  
She seemed to think about this a minute. “And how is it you can do this?”  
  
He smirked and held out his arms. “Because I saved the world, didn’t I? And this is my reward!”  
  
“Your reward is to dream about me forever?” she asked, voice flat.  
  
“Well.” He deflated. “Yeah.”  
  
She actually looked angry, and he figured she was about to lay into him for perving his way into her bedroom, or something, but instead she demanded, “If you got to pick a reward for saving the world, why didn’t you just wish yourself back to life?”  
  
He shrugged, hands going into his pockets, where, oh yeah, he found his smokes and lighter. Bit of metal had been in her pocket once. “Had to be a thing, and being brought back to life ain’t a thing. But a dream’s a thing, isn’t it?”  
  
She stared a bit more, then closed her eyes on a deep breath. He waited to be tossed out, or whatever, but instead she sat up straighter in bed and then folded her legs under the covers, indicating the free space on the bed now with her eyes.  
  
Wondering if she had on any bottoms to go with that scourge of a top, he sat carefully on the end of the mattress, then matched her pose, legs crossed on top of the covers though, and waited. He could this for soddin’ ever, couldn’t he? He couldn’t believe he’d actually made up a plan involving Buffy that was working right.  
  
“OK,” she said, and it was just so her. “You’re dreaming of me forever, and I’m dreaming of you as long as I want, and that works because dreams don’t make any sense.”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“OK.” She tucked her hair behind her ears with much steadier hands, he noticed with pleasure. “Like with so many things in my life, I’m just going to accept not understanding that at all.”  
  
“Probably for the best.”  
  
“But that’s really you?” And oh, that was a much more plaintive tone than he’d been expecting. Could she be happy to see him, then?  
  
“Yes,” he said. “Well, dream me. But me in the sense that I’m the one choosing the doing and the saying of what the dream me is doing and saying.” He thought about that for a minute. “I mean, this is really me in my dream talking to you in yours.”  
  
“Prove it.”  
  
“What?”  
  
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Prove you’re not just a figure in my dream.”  
  
“How the bloody hell am I supposed to do that?”  
  
She glared at him. “Do something I wouldn’t expect you to do.”  
  
“Like what, origami? How’m I supposed to know what you’re expecting me to do?”  
  
“Well, I would expect the dream Spike to be wondering how naked I am.”  
  
“Oh.” Spike looked away, knowing his guilt was showing. “Yeah, I did that a bit. But that’s not all. Mostly, I’m just hoping you don’t mind this too much.”  
  
“Somehow none of that surprises me.” Her tone was softer than he had thought it would be.  
  
“Well.” He tried thinking harder, pulled a fag from his pocket, and lit up. Thank God dream cigarettes were just as good as the real ones. Easier to replace too, he’d bet. “I don’t know I’ve got anything left to surprise you with, real me or dream-real me. You kinda already saw the whole package.”  
  
“Spike, look at me.”  
  
He did, and even though he was inhaling blessed nicotine deep into his dead lungs, he stopped breathing.  
  
“What are you thinking right now?” she asked.  
  
He finished with the inhaling thing, blew out smoke, saw her wrinkle her nose at the smell. “I’m thinking of how beautiful you are. I’m wondering if you could feel me if I touched you.”  
  
Cautiously, she held out her hand, the same one she’d given him to touch in the hellmouth. He saw with relief the skin looked fine. Swallowing a little dread, he put his own hand out, and touched hers. God, she was warm.  
  
“I feel that,” she said. “You’re cool to the touch, like you always were.”  
  
He could barely hear her, though, feeling the skin of her hand now. He curled his fingers and palm around it, lifting it up, bringing it to his face where he could smell her, reaching down helplessly to touch his lips to just a bit of her. And then she snatched it back, and his hand was empty and cold now, not cool at all.  
  
“That’s not going to work,” she said. “I know that’s what Spike would do.”  
  
“Yeah?” He hadn’t known it himself. Couldn’t believe he couldn’t keep from creepin’ on her, couldn’t keep from wanting her even in a dream for a minute while he was trying to behave like something more than bloody dreaming Peeping Tom.  
  
“I know Spike loved me,” she said, and he looked at her, startled.  
  
“Love, pet. Always love.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s the expression he’d have on his face too.”  
  
“Can’t not be me, pigeon, even if you don’t like it.”  
  
“I like it just fine,” she said, and he knew he was smiling again. “But it doesn’t mean anything. This is hardly the first time I’ve dreamed you’re back.”  
  
“It’s not? Seriously?”  
  
She crossed her arms again, quite firmly this time. “Of course it’s not. I told you I love you.”  
  
He couldn’t help waving that away, dream-real Buffy or not. “Yeah, but you just said that to be kind. And I appreciated it, but I’m not expecting anything like that now.”  
  
“So my saying I love you again, that surprises you?” she asked.  
  
“No, you were always kind, even when you were being a bitch.” He shrugged, finished his butt and crushed it on the sole of a boot before flicking it away. “But it’s still aces to hear it, luv.”  
  
“And see? This is doing nothing to convince me it’s really you.”  
  
His sighed in frustration. “I’m not sure what you want, Slayer. But, hey, I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone, ever, not Dru, not some bint I met in a bar, no one.”  
  
“And how would I know it’s true? You could say you knew Elvis. What would I know about it?”  
  
“Why would I want to meet that ponce?” he demanded. “Stole all his best stuff, you know.”  
  
“Spike!”  
  
“All right. All right. I’ll tell you something you can look up.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“You know, when you wake up. I’ll even tell you the book I know’s got the little fact in it.”  
  
She frowned at him.  
  
“It’s a diary, actually, still in print, from someone who knew me, you know, when I was alive, before Dru. She thought it was bloody hilarious, didn’t she?”  
  
“And if you never told anyone, how did she know about it?”  
  
“Everyone knew about it,” he grumbled, picking at the laces of his boot. “It was the joke of the day.”  
  
“What joke?”  
  
God, it was hard, even in a damn dream. He decided just to stop looking at her. “Well, being ‘William the Bloody’ and being ‘Spike,’ I know you lot think that’s all about being a vampire, feasting on blood and torturing people with railroad spikes.”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“And I did do that,” he said, feeling proud of it until he felt the opposite, all while she watched. “But that’s not—the nicknames, that’s not where they came from. They were…”  
  
She waited.  
  
“Look, they were about my poetry, right?”  
  
“Your what?”  
  
“It was the time! It was what men like me did back then!” He reached for another fag, then about leapt off the bed when she grabbed his arm, making him look at her.  
  
“Look, it was just something I did, passed the time. And I was sort of, I just had things I wanted to say, and I thought they needed to rhyme because, well, beautiful things rhymed then.”  
  
“So what did that have to do with railroad spikes?”  
  
He pulled his arm out of her grip, gently. “Look, just wake up and go find a copy of _Lady Treglane’s Daily Thoughts and Reflections_ , OK? Harper’s edition, it’s on page 142.”  
  
She nodded uncertainly then, then glanced up at him in what looked like alarm. “But if I wake up, I won’t be dreaming anymore.”  
  
“Well, usually.”  
  
“Then I can’t talk to you anymore!”  
  
“Oh, that.” He gave that a thinking, then shrugged. “Seems to me, I made it clear you could dream about me for as long as you liked. Don’t see why that has to be all at once. Just dream about me again, and then you’ll know it’s really me, sort of.”  
  
She nodded slowly. “OK.”  
  
“Really?” He knew he was grinning like an idiot now. “You’d like to dream of me again?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“No ‘of course’ about it, luv. Half-figured you’d buy yourself a Spike-shaped dream catcher after this, leave you to sleep in peace.”  
  
“That was your song, Spike, not mine.”  
  
He just shrugged, half-reached for his pack of smokes, then just sort of sat there.  
  
“ _Lady Treglane’s Daily Thoughts and Reflections_ ,” she repeated slowly. “Harper’s edition, page 142.”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
She nodded, firmly, looking apprehensive and determined. And that was his Slayer, right there.  
  
The room flickered out, and he was sitting Indian-style on that blank floor in the nothing room. With a laugh, he jumped to his feet, taking out a smoke and lighting up with relish.  
  
“Well, that was a bloody tango of—”  
  
“Spike?”  
  
He twirled around and was standing in a library, and Buffy was a few feet away, standing there holding a book. And that was a better look she had on now: one of those soft, skimpy tops all buttoned up the front in leaf green, a couple long necklaces, a pink and green skirt with a fishtail hemline, and brown boots of soft leather. Her hair was all salon-perfect too, with those hoop earrings right where they should be.  
  
“You fell asleep in a library?” he asked.  
  
“No, I’m sleeping on the couch of a friend of Giles’. But I found this at the library.” She held up the book, opened it where her finger was marking a page, and read: “And then Douglas said, ‘I'd rather have a railroad spike driven into my head than listen to his poetry!’ We laughed for hours.”  
  
She dropped her arm, holding the book down and looking at him.  
  
Damn, that still stung a bit. He shrugged again and took a drag on his Marlborough.  
  
Then she smiled, a little cheeky. “Says here they were talking about ‘young Mr. Pratt.’”  
  
“Oh. Forgot that bit was in there.”  
  
“William Pratt?”  
  
“It’s spelled different, all right?”  
  
She swallowed what looked like a laugh, and then she shelved the book before walking toward him, stopping about a foot away. She smelled great.  
  
“So it’s really you,” she said.  
  
“In the not-flesh.”  
  
She kept looking, and he braced himself for a smile or a punch in the face, which meant he was at a total loss when she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.  
  
“What, Slayer?”  
  
She gave the sweetest little hitching breath, and he was about to do the thing with falling to his knees again, but instead he took one of his arms and then flicked his butt away before taking the other and wrapping them around her small, tight body and bending his head down to nuzzle the blissful sunshine of her hair.  
  
“So,” she said, for some reason not moving away from him yet. He could feel her breath through his shirt. “This is what you wanted for your champion’s reward? Dreaming with me?”  
  
“That’s right, pet.”  
  
“And you know it’s really me, right?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“Well, like you said you knew, before.”  
  
She leaned her head back to look at him with just the perfect frown of confusion. “Huh?” He gave her his best leer. “Well, you’re not naked and pulling me to the floor, right?”  
  
But he didn’t get the laugh he wanted. Instead, she stepped back, not hugging him anymore.  
  
“I didn’t—” he started to say, then damn near swallowed his tongue when her unsteady hands went to the buttons of her blouse, undoing two before he could get himself to shout, “No!”  
  
She looked at him, struck frozen.  
  
He put up his hands, stepping back in horror even while his stupid bloody cock twitched in his stupid bloody pants. “Just no, all right?”  
  
“No?” She actually looked hurt. “I thought you wanted—”  
  
“And I thought you bloody understood. This isn’t—I’m not having a dream, we’re sharing it. What I want doesn’t have to have anything to do with you, and I told you, the dream’s forever for me but not you. I’m not using your dreams to pester you into anything. You don’t have to do anything to get me to go away. You want, you just never choose to dream about me, ever again, and that’s it, right?”  
  
“I don’t understand.” And she still had her fingers on her damn button. The third one down, right where he could see the swell of her breast and a hint of lace from her bra, and his mouth watered.  
  
“It’s simple. You’re in as much control here as you would be in the waking world. I’m doing what I want, but you only have to do whatever you want.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And I know, you see? I know you would never want that.” He waved at her top. “Not so easy-like, not without my getting you drunk or slaying a dragon or something.”  
  
Her hands dropped to her waist, thank God. “You already got me drunk once, and I think you could call closing the hellmouth a dragon-slaying thing.”  
  
“Buffy, don’t.”  
  
“Don’t what?”  
  
“Don’t pretend. If I wanted pretend I could have had you that way forever. I could have gotten a perfect you, an imperfect you, a whatever-I-wanted you.”  
  
“A slutty me, you mean?”  
  
“You were never slutty! Although, a couple of your better outfits—”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
He shrugged. He shouldn’t have tossed his cigarette away. He didn’t think he could pull off looking cool lighting up another one just now. Made him think of a time he’d fumbled his lighter around with half-severed fingers.  
  
“Look, I know you could never love me, not like that, even if I told myself different a couple times. Even if I wanted it so bad I made a bloody fool out of myself. And I know I could never be happy with just some version of you I could violate whenever I wanted.”  
  
She frowned deeply at him.  
  
“You’re not meant to be violated, even when you let me, and that just ended up hurting you, and then I hurt you again, and I’m just never doing that again, ever. And I need this to be real, Slayer. Don’t you see that? This is it. This is eternity for me. It’s got to be real, or I’ve just damned myself to hell, can’t you get it?”  
  
“So you’re saying if I try to please you…”  
  
Spike had to gulp a bit then, bleeding plonker that he was. But the way her tongue curled around the word “please.”  
  
“…you’ll think you’ve screwed up and this isn’t really me.”  
  
“Well, I know for a fact you’d never go for it in the middle of a bloomin’ library!”  
  
She made an odd expression, then frowned, then looked around.  
  
“That’s funny,” she said, not to him. “I thought it worked like that.”  
  
“What worked?”  
  
“Well, that didn’t.”  
  
“What?” And then he smiled.  
  
“What?” she asked back.  
  
“Well, see? This here now, this is how I know it’s really you because I don’t have a soddin’ clue what you’re on about.”  
  
“And that makes you happy?”  
  
“Absolutely.” He sighed, almost hugging himself with the joy of it. “Almost as good as having you kick me on the chin!”  
  
But that didn’t get a laugh from her either. In fact, she looked sad now.  
  
“I did that a lot, didn’t I?”  
  
“Well, I did come into town for the express purpose of killing you, and then I annoyed you, sometimes, on purpose, and then, you know, it’s not like I didn’t hit you back, except when the chip stopped me.”  
  
Her expression changed again, turning a little sharp. “The chip.”  
  
Glad she was diverted away from whatever was bothering her, he nodded. “What about it?”  
  
“I always wondered, why did you let it stop you?”  
  
“You mean, aside from the blinding pain in my head?”  
  
“You only felt that when you hurt people.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Not demons.”  
  
“Still not getting it, luv.”  
  
“So, you were a master vampire. Daniel—Giles’ friend—told me yesterday that you could have called up an army of vampires if you wanted, even when the chip was working right.”  
  
Spike thought about it. “Probably, if I really put my mind to it.”  
  
“So, when you hated us, why the one-on-one attempts at confrontation? Why not just call up a platoon or two and mow us down?”  
  
“Where would the pleasure be in that?” All right, he was calm enough now for that smoke. He went through the routine as he explained, “Getting someone else to do something for me? Watching from the sidelines like a prancing major general while I sent vamps out to attack your friends? I’m evil in tight pants, luv, but I’m not some uptight arsehole like that.”  
  
Buffy frowned, doing that little thing where she pouted and thought at the same time. God, he wanted to catch that bottom lip in his teeth and lick at it. And what was weird, maybe he could tell her that, eventually.  
  
He laughed. “You know, I never thought about it, but this is right liberating!”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“Well, I can’t hurt you at all now, can I?” He left his fag in his mouth and spread his arms wide. “And even if I said something horrible on accident, well, you could just wake up and forget all about it if you wanted to. So.” He took a drag and then flicked ashes on the floor. “I can tell you whatever you’d like now, answer any question, right? Because I don’t need to hide anything from you anymore.  
  
“I’m never attacking you again, never working against you again, never need to hold something back so I can use it on you later again. I can be a better man to you as a dream than I ever could as a pretend-man, prancing around with my soul like it was a bouquet of soddin’ flowers you were supposed to be all flattered by. ‘Oh, look at me, Buffy! I went to school and got a gold soul on my bleedin’ test!’ Surprised you didn’t drive a stake through my scratched-up bosom right there in that church. Had no business being there anyway, did I?”  
  
“Spike, no.”  
  
She sounded distressed again, damn it. “No, what? I’m not saying anything bad about that church.”  
  
“You getting a soul was a pure and good thing. Even as bad as things were when you got back, with the First, I knew what it really meant. I knew what you were then, the real you, and what you wanted to be, what you could be.”  
  
Scowling at himself, he dropped the last of his smoke on the floor and stepped on it. “I wasn’t making light of it, pet. Just saying, I should never have expected anything from you because of it, which I did, for all that I said I didn’t.”  
  
She stared at him solemnly then, which wasn’t right, not at all.  
  
“Look,” he told her. “We’re in a dream, right? We control it. So what are we doing standing around in this academic tuck shop? Let’s go someplace.”  
  
“I tried that.”  
  
“When?”  
  
“A little while ago.”  
  
“Well, that was just you, right? We probably need to think about it together-like. So.” He rubbed his hands together. “Where’s your pleasure?”  
  
She seemed to give that some real thought, then smiled a little slyly.  
  
“The Bronz?”  
  
And then there they were, sitting at one of those great tables in the back where the music was clear but still soft enough you didn’t have to shout. And they both had drinks, and a fresh hot onion blossom was right there between them.  
  
“All right!” Spike said, reaching for a piece, while Buffy looked around with a fond smile and then took a sip of her drink. Beer, from the smell of it. He’d gotten a shot of Jack, a double even.  
  
After a while of just sitting there, drinking it all in, he nodded to her. “So, I’ve been blathering on about me and mine, how about you and yours? I saw Dawn in the room when you were sleeping, and Red and her bit of fluff. You said your watcher was alive. Harris?”  
  
“He’s good. About a third of the potentials I went down the hellmouth with came back out, thanks to you.”  
  
He tossed off another shrug. And look, more Jack in his glass even without a waitress around.  
  
“Faith and Robin got out too. We’re staying near Phoenix right now, like I said, a friend of Giles’. He’s got a large house here, really large. I think he’s in computers or something. And there’s a hospital where we put the wounded.”  
  
“Immediate plans?”  
  
“None. A few more potentials showed up, except they’re slayers now, and two of them still had their watchers. Turns out they were hiding their charges from the First. Giles is trying to find out if there are any more watchers, get a new council going.”  
  
“That will save us all, no doubt.”  
  
Buffy shrugged, peeling off a bit of onion, nibbling on it, and then licking her fingers while Spike’s shot glass went heavy in his hand. “Giles thinks he can figure out what went wrong with the council, set it up better this time. Get rid of that damn Cruciamentum to start with.”  
  
“You know, I heard about that. Long time before yours, I mean. It’s when I first started realizing what a crap lot you slayers have. I mean, what, you start to get old enough to be your own person and they try to kill you? Like most slayers don’t die before they get to adulthood already?”  
  
Buffy shrugged, licking her fingers again, and damn if he didn’t have to shift slightly in his seat to relieve some pressure. She looked over at the dance floor then, and he thought of the very first time he’d ever seen her, dancing like a flame amid a sea of pimply tossers who had no idea what was living and breathing and moving about in their midst, sharing their space as though they’d earned it.  
  
But then, look at him here, watching her get all porn star with a fried vegetable. Who was he to talk about earning things? Damn lucky to be alive, he was. Well, in a sense.  
  
The music turned a little slow then, and she turned to him, glistening in the colored lights. “Let’s dance.”  
  
He thought about it, holding her like that in front of everyone, and damn near fell out of his chair. Except they’d hugged before, and that hadn’t been a bad thing. There’d just be motion this time, moving against each other, and maybe he’d lean into her a little bit, say something into her ear, put his hands low on her hips, hold her against him, feel her human heart beating, and breathe in the scent of her so close.  
  
_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._  
  
“Oh, thank God.”  
  
She frowned, looking around. “What?”  
  
“Your alarm clock, luv.”  
  
And then it was all gone, and he was back in the nowhere room.  
  
He figured dreaming about Buffy forever didn’t mean he couldn’t have a break now and then, just a few minutes to himself to get things back in perspective and all that. He was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, and it felt good just to sit there for a while, thinking about all the lovely things he’d gotten to have with the dream-real Buffy. She didn’t seem too upset about him, all things considered, maybe even genuinely pleased. Maybe once she’d settled a bit she’d dream of him again and he’d get an update on things.  
  
It was odd, that, about the watchers’ council. And would there still be potentials below a certain age? Surely the world (or whatever) didn’t expect some eight-year-old to fight demons, did it? Fifteen seemed to be the standard, and that was still damn young, in his opinion.  
  
That made him think, unfortunately, about Angel, the cradle-robbing perv. Even with a soul, the Poof had gone after her when they first met, right? That meant way below the age of consent. At least when Spike’d been panting after her she was a legal adult.  
  
Right. He stood up, put his hands over his head and stretched a bit. Time to get back in the game.  
  
And it was dark and raining, bloody cold rain, and it was another one of those miserable little alleys somewhere in Sunnydale. What the hell was she doing, dreaming about this place?  
  
Unless.  
  
He heard the _thump_ of human flesh on demon and flashed into game face as he spun around to see Buffy in a black leather mini-skirt, tight red tank top, and shiny black boots taking on a minion of Azogg-Mon, all scales and teeth and claws, just like the one that charged at him from the other side.  
  
With a roar of rage and delight, he leapt at it, and the whole thing hurt and felt fantastic, and there were crunching bones and snapped necks, and it was all as merry and gay as grandpa’s fancy Sunday togs, even when he realized that the punches and clawing getting through Buffy’s defenses were actually causing her pain.  
  
Wondering how she’d managed to call for him in the middle of a nightmare even as he skewered some mangy snake thing with a broken plank, he twisted around to see what help he could be just in time to see the Slayer pull the head off the last of their attackers with a cry of triumph.  
  
He howled with the glory of it and raced up to grab her in his arms and spin her around. She looked startled, but not angry, and as he set her feet down on the pavement she leaned her head back to wash her face in the rain, pressing her breasts against him and showing off a slender, perfect column of pale neck.  
  
“Buggering hell,” he whimpered, and crushed her up against him, burying his nose in the place where neck met shoulder and just breathing her in deep to the bottom of his lungs. She was glorious victory and shining power, and he was so hard it bloody well hurt.  
  
And then she leaned back up and kissed him, wrapping arms around his neck and legs around his waist, and his demon screamed a battle cry and tore through all sanity and restraint. With hard hands he grabbed her ass, shoving that tiny skirt out of the way and ripping off something that was probably a frilly thong.  
  
She tore open his shirt and peeled off her top as he hoisted her up higher, and there were her perfect breasts, covered in rain and sweat and even some demon gore than he found he could give a rat’s toss about. Shoving her back against a brick wall, he mouthed at her while she moaned and pressed him harder against her. He sucked that soft skin and tongued her nipples, one after the other and back and forth, biting her tits even while he made sure his fangs didn’t come out.  
  
And down below, she was grinding against him, and he felt a small, nimble hand push down between them and reach for his belt.  
  
And he froze, even while he was quivering with the want of her, and looked into her dark eyes.  
  
“No,” he groaned. “No, not like that. I won’t take you like that again.”  
  
“Don’t stop.” God, her voice, a woman’s voice, not a scared little girl. His warrior Buffy, the Slayer, was giving him a command, not a plea. Damnit, but he was going to pop off in his pants like a buggering school boy if she so much as touched him.  
  
And that was an idea, actually.  
  
Stepping away from the wall, quickly but gently, he laid her down on the dirty wet concrete, moaning with her as she spread her raised knees, skirt bunched around her waist, commanding him to enter with her whole body, including her flashing eyes and open mouth. She was drinking in rain and breathing out stuttering gasps even as her lips curved up just a bit, anticipating just how bloody good this was going to feel.  
  
And he knew it would. He knew the Slayer’s body, though now it was more mature, more a woman’s than before. He dove in, scraping kisses and a little teeth up her inner thigh and let himself think about how much he loved her, how much it was always about loving her, before he licked inside to her pink little nub, flicking it with his tongue, worrying it just a little bit with his teeth.  
  
“Spike! Oh, God!” He felt her whole body clench around him, thighs pressing down against his arms and shoulders as he held her up for better access. With a twist of his left hand, he reached around to the front below his mouth and smoothed two fingers inside, reveling that she was wetter in there than even the pouring rain in his hair. She smelled and tasted like pure sex, like power and purpose, and he breathed her in and tasted her flesh, working her over with the skill of over a century of learning just where to press, where to tease, where to give and retreat and give again.  
  
“Need you,” she gasped. And he would do that. He would give her whatever she needed, turn this hell of a nightmare into a sex dream so strong he figured she’d come not just against his lips and tongue but out there in the waking world, on what’s-his-name’s bloody sofa.  
  
“Have me, luv,” he panted, making sure his breath cooled her just there while the vibrations of his voice hummed up against her clit. Her next noise was a familiar grunt while the inside of her undulated and then squeezed down, his fingers in that hot vise, and when she made that next heady moan that meant he’d gotten her there, he came, just like he wanted, into the unforgiving wet and cold of his jeans, and the earth bloody moved.  
  
And when he was really aware of anything again, he was nowhere. Lying dry and clean beneath the spread wings of his duster, still panting a little, still warm and buzzing so much that it took him many long minutes before he realized how incredibly angry he was.  
  
With a roar of frustration he got to his feet, ran an automatic body-check that he was ready for anything, and threw himself into whatever the bitch was dreaming about now, whether the bloody cow wanted him there or not.  
  
He was in a dark room, but he could see her standing there well enough as he rushed forward.  
  
“What the _bloody hell_ was that, Slayer?”  
  
Silently, she turned to him, and he recognized that spaghetti-strap top even before he registered the lines of pews and the soft moonlight coming through the windows.  
  
He turned and saw the cross, half-expecting to see his own rotten, burning body draped over it.  
  
“Slayer?” he asked, turning back to her. She went from spreading her legs for him in a demon-soaked alley to _this_?  
  
“I was scared.” She was luminous—skin, lips, eyes—while she stared at him. “You scared me.”  
  
“Well, what was I supposed to think? You didn’t seem to want me to go slowly, and I—”  
  
“No, not then, not in the alley. Here, that night.”  
  
“Here?” He looked around at this place of refuge that had done nothing but mock him. His memories of the whole thing weren’t clear, but he knew he hadn’t attacked her, hadn’t let himself even touch her. “Oh, you mean scared I was going to do something. Look, I was more than half off my rocker, way more. I was just babbling. I didn’t mean anything. Had nothing to do with you, really. You should just forget about all that.”  
  
“Forget about the moment I realized you’d gotten your soul?” She gazed at him sadly, lit up by candles. “You were in so much pain, and all I did was stand here and feel scared.”  
  
“Not your fault. I would have scared anyone, I’m sure.”  
  
“I wanted to comfort you. I did. But I had no idea how.”  
  
“Who would have? I was a mess. Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“You told me once, after the tower, after I was brought back, that you saved me, over and over. Not when it counted, you said, but after that.”  
  
“I did. I did it even after you came back, wishing you didn’t have to go through all that.”  
  
“I know.” She gestured to the altar, the candles, the windows, the darkness. “This is where I come back to. Not the hellmouth. This is where I could have done something. I should have held you, should have told you it would be OK, that I would be there for you. This is where I could have made a difference.”  
  
“What? No, Slayer. The First’s trigger was active long before you and I met in the basement.”  
  
“I’m not talking about the First!”  
  
He stepped back from her anger.  
  
“I’m talking about you. You were hurting, you were in pain, suffering, and I just stood here like nothing and watched you burn yourself on that cross. You just wanted forgiveness and rest, and I just stood here. I was asked to be a human being, and I failed because I was scared.”  
  
He saw the tears coming and rushed forward in horror, taking her hands, desperate to make the self-hate in her voice go away.  
  
“That’s not the way of it at all, luv. You were scared because you were human, because a monster was looming in the dark, talking crazy, ranting and out of its head. You were brave to stand there with me at all, brave not to run away screaming in the night, brave not to stake me and put me out of our misery right then and there.”  
  
“Don’t say that!” She stepped up and slugged him in the chest, right over his dead heart, forcing the breath out of him, and yet he knew how much she’d pulled that punch. “Don’t talk about yourself that way! You were only out of your mind because you wanted to be a man for me, and I just stood there and watched you burn.”  
  
She stepped away from him, looking to the side, and he took the opportunity to rub his chest.  
  
“Well, look at me just standing here now,” he told her. “You know I love you more than anything and that I would do anything, at all, to help you with this. And look. I’m just frozen up, no idea what to do.”  
  
“I read about it,” she said next, looking a candle burning nearby. “A few days later, after you told me about seeing a man about a girl and winning your soul back, I had Giles find references to it. I read about that suffering and torment you went through. About how it killed pretty much anyone who’s ever tried it. About the fighting and being tortured, and there were parts about beetles and snakes and fire.”  
  
“Don’t think about that.”  
  
“Don’t think about what you went through to get back your soul?” She turned on him, indignant and glorious, and he just couldn’t help it this time. He went to his knees and just flat-out begged.  
  
“Please, don’t think about it. Don’t trouble. Never, ever blame yourself for any part of it.”  
  
“You said you did it for me.”  
  
“I did, and I meant it, but I did it for me as well. I had to. I couldn’t live with what I’d done. I couldn’t be a man, couldn’t be a monster. I’d taken the exquisite fire of you and burned out all my trappings until I saw what I really was, and I couldn’t stand to live with it anymore. It was get my soul or wait for the sunrise, and that meant never seeing you again, and I couldn’t do that, much as you deserved never seeing me again. So I made myself what you could deserve instead.” And he looked down at her boots, wondering if perhaps it were time to lick them.  
  
“Spike, get up from there.”  
  
He stood. He’d fly if she told him to, long as he didn’t have to learn how to turn into a bat or anything.  
  
“I don’t want you kneeling before me, Spike.”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“I don’t want you crawling toward me like some minion. You’re no one’s thing, certainly not something I’m supposed to feel like I own.”  
  
He didn’t really get what that was supposed to mean, but he nodded again.  
  
“Spike, damnit, look at me.”  
  
He did, and he knew he was smiling, and trembling a bit.  
  
“What happened to you?” she asked.  
  
“Well, I’d just gotten my soul, and—”  
  
“Not then, now. I fought beside a champion, took his hand in fire, and never admired anyone more in my life. And now here you are, treating yourself like some sort of disease just because you want to touch me, not believing me for a second when I say I want you to touch me. So I have to dream up some scenario where you’re fighting demons at my side before I can get you to let yourself go enough to lay a hand on me!”  
  
“It was more than a hand, luv,” he said before he could help it.  
  
“I know.” She walked up to him, raised up her own hand to touch his lips. “But there were hands, and lips, and I’m not some fake thing because I wanted them on me.”  
  
He was trembling again. “They’re yours whenever you want them anywhere you want them, luv.”  
  
“And these?” she asked, all serious and smiling just a little bit at the same time as she slid her hands to his ears, stroking them so lightly.  
  
“Ugh, yeah. Yeah, of course.”  
  
“And these?” Light traces over his eyelids, down his cheekbones, over his chin, down his neck.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And this?” Fingers on his chest now, he could only nod, considering his throat had clamped up and he couldn’t have drawn breath for the wide world. “And…this?” she asked as her hands slid lower to where he jumped against her touch.  
  
He nodded again, but then her hands slid up. “And this?”  
  
He frowned, cleared his throat in a way about as sexy as a moldy bit of cheese, and asked, “My liver?”  
  
“Your soul, Spike. Is it here for me too?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And your demon? What does he have to say about it?”  
  
Spike snorted. “He was yours before all the rest, I think.”  
  
“You think?”  
  
Spike had to laugh a bit. “It’s not like we have long chats over tea, you know. When it comes to you it basically just says things like, ‘Buffy mine. Touch Buffy now.’”  
  
She smiled, but he could see her realizing something.  
  
“So, when you want me, when this wants me.” She slid a hand down again and squeezed lightly, though it was enough to make him go cross-eyed a minute. “When you want us naked together and…screwing. You think that’s just the demon in you?”  
  
He thought about that (as much as he could think about anything other than the heat and pressure of her hand), kind of agreeing, then, no. He shook his head.  
  
“No, all of me wants that. I just don’t want only that.”  
  
“And I don’t want you just for that.”  
  
“You did once.”  
  
“No, I wanted you for less than that. And more. I wanted you to make me feel but also to punish me, because I was alive and I hated it, and what did that make me?”  
  
“I never wanted to do that to you.”  
  
“And you didn’t. I did it to you. I made you do it. I took the love you were offering me and defiled it because I hated myself. And you let me because you didn’t know any better, and you only wanted to help.”  
  
She brought up her other hand to hold his chin in place, not letting him look away. “But that was a long time ago, and I worked damn hard to get myself back to a place of love again. And now I’m there, and when I want you it’s because I want you there with me. I want to take the love you offer me so generously, but I need you to take the love I’m offering back.”  
  
She was staring into him now, he felt, staring past his eyes and seeing the soul and demon behind. “Don’t you remember how desperate you were for me to realize you loved me? Don’t you remember how it felt when you finally saw me accept it?”  
  
He just stared at her, feeling some sort of horrible, greedy, consuming hope rise up in him.  
  
“I meant it then, and I mean it now, and I think I’m going to mean it forever. I love you, Spike, William the Bloody, William Pratt, and whatever other name you want to take up. I love you, and I want you, and I need you to believe me.”  
  
“I can’t do that, luv.”  
  
“Why the hell not?”  
  
He shook his head minutely, pressing against the grip she had on his chin.  
  
“Tell me why not!”  
  
“Because it hurts too much!”  
  
“Too much?” She squeezed him tighter, and God he was about to pass out. “You let insects crawl inside your head? You let a hell god torture you for hours? You let that ubervamp drown you over and over?”  
  
“Well, didn’t exactly let him do that so much as endured that.”  
  
“Fine. You endured the wrath of the First Evil, but you can’t stand the pain of believing I love you?”  
  
And it did hurt, the hope that had chomped down on his heart and wasn’t letting go. “Different kind of pain.”  
  
“I don’t care!” Her eyes flashed fire at him, and he felt it on his skin, in his blood. “I need you, Spike. I need the warrior who fights at my side. I need the man who sees the real me when I fool everyone else into seeing what they need from me instead. I need the lover in my bed who knows what my body wants and gives it to me. I want the person who is always there for me, the one I want to be there for too. I don’t care if it hurts you. I can’t have you not knowing how I feel anymore.”  
  
“Buffy,” he whispered, wincing as hope pushed him forward, pushed him into a new and terrible kind of faith. And then he was kissing her, for the first time tasting love on her lips along with the want and the need. And it was completely impossible, but he’d done the impossible with her before, hadn’t he?  
  
But she loved him. Some inconceivable way. He knew she loved him.  
  
Her hands went to his belt, but despite everything he reached down to still them.  
  
“God!” She sounded furious, and his balls tightened in lust. “What now?”  
  
“Buffy, we’re in a soddin’ church.”  
  
She blinked at him, then dropped her forehead to his chest and groaned.  
  
“Then let’s just go.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Any place with a horizontal surface.”  
  
Oh God. She’d be the death of him if he weren’t already dead. And he cast about for memories, but not his crypt, where she’d been in his arms and never really there. And not her bedroom, where she’d been with another man while he smoked endless cigarettes beneath her window, and not that poor building.  
  
“A room, Spike,” she said. “Just think of a room somewhere with a bed in it.”  
  
He could do that, and together they were in a place that was somewhere, nicely lit but pretty featureless except for the, wow, really large bed they’d both thought up, with clean white sheets and pillows and bugger-all who cared what else?  
  
She released her grip, and he picked her up to toss her onto the sheets. She laughed, and he shed his duster like an old skin, stripped off his shirt, kicked off his boots, and stepped out of his pants, watching her all the while as she plucked off top, slacks, shoes, socks, bra, and knickers. And he stood there just one more little minute to admire the view.  
  
“I never told you,” she said softly, staring at him with the softest eyes he’d ever seen.  
  
“Told me what?”  
  
“How hot it gets me to look at you.”  
  
So he was on top of her pretty much the next second, drowning in her warmth and seeking to give her everything. And then she wrapped her little slayer’s hand around his cock, and that was all she wrote.  
  
“Damn,” he muttered when he got his breath back. Coming had been more a relief than anything, and now he was lying on her like a flopped fish, face buried in her neck while light touches trailed along the muscles of his back. “Damn and sorry.”  
  
“Why?” she asked, and her voice vibrated all through his body. “I took it as a compliment.”  
  
“Girls say that,” he mumbled. “Or, so I’ve heard.”  
  
“What did I tell you about believing what I say?”  
  
He lifted up, propping up on his elbows, and saw love and no censure in her eyes. And that was kind of lovely, really. First rate. He smiled down at her, feeling her beneath him, and nodded before he kissed her. And that just zinged all along his bones and fizzed up in his blood.  
  
“Now, let’s take care of my Slayer,” he whispered, getting ready to take her to bliss a few dozen times before she had to wake up.  
  
But she was looking at him thoughtfully. “Spike.”  
  
“Luv?”  
  
“What do you like in bed?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s always about me, when you touch me.”  
  
“Well, yeah.”  
  
“But what about you? What do you want me to do to you?”  
  
“Your being here is kind of the point of things, Slayer.”  
  
“But I want to do more than just be here.”  
  
“You’re the most active lover I’ve ever had.”  
  
“But I’m always just seeking my pleasure, or my pain. I never ask what you want.”  
  
“You.”  
  
“Beyond just me.”  
  
“But that’s the point, Buffy. I want you. It doesn’t matter how you’re touching me as long as you’re touching me. Besides.” He nudged at her a bit, smiling with a wicked memory. “You’ve been down there, taken me in your hot little mouth, even shoved your fingers up my—”  
  
“Yes, I’ve been an active sexual partner,” she said. “And it’s not like I’m complaining.”  
  
“Sort of sounds like complaining.”  
  
“But I want to give you everything, just like you want to give me everything. It’s like, it’s like what’s in the marriage vows, you know? ‘With my body I thee worship.’”  
  
Oh God, that was hot. He just sort of groaned, getting hard in a second.  
  
“Tell me, William. Tell me what I can do with my body to worship yours.”  
  
He stared at her, genuinely lost for a moment, then took one of her hands, kissed it, and pressed it against the cool skin of his chest, over his heart.  
  
“Speak to me,” she whispered. “I want to get it right. I need words.”  
  
“Bloody hell, woman. You don’t ask for much here, do you?”  
  
“You’ll do it because it’s hard.”  
  
“It’s hard, all right.” He rolled his hips.  
  
She rolled her eyes, though she shivered deliciously too. “I know you. And I know you love nothing more than a challenge. Consider it a slayer’s challenge for her consort. Tell me just what you want me to do to you.”  
  
“Consort?” He loved the sound of that. That was something a hero could be, couldn’t he? Vampire and only a dream or not.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
So he thought about it, really put the effort in. And while he was there, he took to staring at her breasts. Damn perky they were, even when she was lying on her back. Had to be a slayer thing.  
  
“Well, I think I’m having a little trouble with the phrasing of the question.”  
  
“Oh?” Her eyes were roaming over his chest now. Was she drooling just a tad? He tried to puff up a bit, without looking like he was puffing up.  
  
“Yeah, it’s the ‘do to me’ part. I don’t want you to do anything to me. I want you to do something with me.”  
  
“Something like?”  
  
“Make love, I guess, the way that’s supposed to be meant. Working together to make it between us. I want to act and react with you.”  
  
“Give and take, you mean?”  
  
“Yeah, but not back and forth, but like, together, at the same time. Here, like, I take your perfect breast in my hand here…”  
  
She gasped a little, arching up.  
  
“Yeah, see, and you do that, moving against my hand. And then I kiss this little bit here…”  
  
She moaned.  
  
“And your nub tightens up, all hard, and I know you liked it.”  
  
“I did.”  
  
“And then you could, you know, spread out your legs a bit.”  
  
“Like this?”  
  
“Oh, God. Uh, yeah. And then you can feel how much I liked that.”  
  
“Do you want to taste me?” she asked. But when he smirked and started to slide back down, she grabbed his upper arms, holding him in place.  
  
“Not like that. I mean, my blood. Do you want to bite me, drink me down?”  
  
Oh, what just happened to his stomach? It clenched up in desire and rolled over in disgust at the same time.  
  
“No, don’t think so, luv.”  
  
“But it’s a dream. It wouldn’t hurt me.”  
  
“It’s the demon and the soul, pet. Both want to be inside you, but they can’t agree on any biting. Oh! There. That’s something. You could bite me all you like. I’d love it.”  
  
“I have, and I will again. But you’re still not getting it.”  
  
“Slayer…”  
  
“I know how to get you off, how to make you feel good. I don’t know how to make you feel loved.”  
  
Feeling like his heart was just going to melt out all over the place, he closed his eyes and breathed her in for a while. But then he had to confess, “I don’t know either. Never had anyone do that for me before. Not like this, not in bed.”  
  
When he could look at her again, her eyes were wet, and he tried to say something, but it was kind of her turn to speak.  
  
“Tell me,” she whispered, and then reached up so gently to kiss him he felt fragile as glass feathers. “Tell me if you can feel I love you when I kiss you.”  
  
“Yes,” he said, his voice ridiculously small.  
  
She drew a hand up behind his head and drew him down to her mouth, so soft and taking such incredible care. He couldn’t help but return it, and there, he hoped she could feel it now, what he meant about making something between him. Because he kissed his way into her heat, tongued her perfect Southern California teeth, wove a little spell around her tongue, and there was love there like a third presence, their own bit of magic.  
  
And then she ran her nails down his back, and his whole being just shuddered.  
  
“Feels like love?” she asked.  
  
“Desire. Passion.”  
  
She opened her legs wider again, taking him by the hips, guiding him a bit. And when her damp hairs slid across the head of his cock, words he’d had no idea were waiting just spilled out.  
  
“Yes, love, and lust, and fire, and you want me to separate it out for you, and I can’t. I can talk about demon and soul, I can even feel it inside me, screaming at me to just get in you already and watch you come, burn in your hot, tight, sweet body until there’s nothing left but you. Like I feel it should be, just you and me. And the thought of it rushes to where we’re connected.”  
  
He shifted against her, rubbing himself right there against her clit, and she made this deep noise he didn’t know she could make. “A slayer’s consort,” he muttered. “Thinking that, thinking of being not just yours, but your partner, fighting by your side, handling my own part of the bargain, keeping up, never letting you down ever again.”  
  
Guided by a part of her he knew well, though it had been so long, a bloody eternity, and it had never really been like this before, not at all, he put himself in, just a little bit, teasing them both.  
  
“I tasted where you lived, but I want to live there too, want you to taste me back.” He slid in deeper, and it was more than heat. It was life. It was strength so great. Pure, undiluted Slayer was surrounding him, and he never, ever wanted to leave.  
  
“You do live there,” she whispered between wonderfully gratifying gasps. “In my body. In my heart.”  
  
“Yes, I want that, more than anything.” Free, without fear, he pulled back just a little so he could plunge back in deeper. “Be here with me.”  
  
“I am.”  
  
He pushed down harder, back and forth, the friction and the blessed sweetness of her rising up, igniting all along his nerve endings, until he felt as bright and powerful as he had done in the hellmouth, burning away Buffy’s enemies with just that gaudy dime store amulet and the power of his soul.  
  
“Keep talking to me, please.”  
  
“I want to be enough for you, for us both to be more together than we are apart. I want to be the sword you wield against all your demons, inside and out. I want you to…” He shook his head just a bit and concentrated on his rhythm. If he got it just right, she’d clamp down on him so hard when she came he’d feel it down to his toes.”  
  
“Want me to what? Spike? Want me to what?”  
  
“Want you to be there for me too, just because it’s where you want to be. Want you not to mind. Want you to…Oh God. You feel so good. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.”  
  
“Say it anyway.”  
  
“I want you to be happy, just because I’m there. I want you to get wet and needy just because I’m looking at you. I want you to run to my bed. I want you to enjoy listening to the stupid cobblers that I spout when I’m admiring you. I. Oh. God.”  
  
She clamped down, his toes curled, and she was looking at him the whole time, her limitless heart staring at him with love while her strong arms caught him easily when he fell.  
  
And then he slept, even though it was inside a dream. Maybe they both slept. He knew it when he woke up, his arms around her. And he chuckled lazily, getting it all now. Stupid not to have seen it before, really.  
  
“Spike?” she murmured.  
  
“Yes, luv?” He tucked her closer against his body, her curves fitting so nicely against his.  
  
“What’s funny?”  
  
“Just me, for not realizing.”  
  
“Realizing what?” She peeked up at him through her lashes, like his own personal sunrise.  
  
“Where I am.”  
  
“You forgot it was a dream? So did I.”  
  
“Oh, ta. Thanks for that.” He smiled, and it was really just daisies and spiced blood there for a bit.  
  
“Wait, what did you mean, then?” she asked.  
  
“Well, I didn’t realize it was possible, the reward I was really getting. I mean, it’s not the way you described it, no form but you knew it was you. You got the warmth part down, though, and knowing everyone I care about is OK, since that’s just basically you, and the Niblet, and you said she was good.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Her voice sounded a little odd, but he didn’t care. It was all to the good now.  
  
“I just mean I never, ever figured I could make it. Not a blood-drenched wanker like me, no matter how many worlds I saved. And look at me. I did it. I made it to Heaven.”  
  
“Spike, I don’t think that’s right.”  
  
“Well, it’s not your Heaven, I guess. Remember, the dream can end for you whenever you want. But you love me, so I’m thinking you’ll stay a good long while.” He squeezed her a bit, heady with the confidence of it. “Still, it’s forever for me. I just never thought I’d get here. Have to fit me for a harp and halo, right? Though maybe not. I’m no bloody cherubim, am I? Wouldn’t love me if I were.”  
  
“Spike.” She sounded a little urgent now, probably meant she was going to wake up soon, go back to the real world.  
  
But he didn’t want to deal with urgency now. And considering everything from a cosmic scale, he didn’t need to.  
  
“It’s all to the good, Buffy,” he said, soothing a touch down her soft, slender arm. “You love me, right?”  
  
“More than anything.”  
  
“Then that’s Heaven however you slice it. Ha! Whoever would have guessed?”  
  
And with surety he closed his eyes. Sleep was his friend now because it meant dreams of the Slayer and her consort.  
  
Talk about your rewards.  
  
  
  
END  
  



End file.
